“On the Porter ranch. It’s twelve miles off. I can go in to-night, rest there a bit, and by noon be here with the cow.”
“And is that baby goin’ to yell like this from now till to-morrow noon? You might’s well have a mountain lion tied up in the bunk.”
The difficulty was indeed only half solved. The infant’s lusty cries were unabated. The miserable mother, with tear-drenched face and quivering chin, sat up in the bunk and tried to rise and go to it, but was restrained by Moreau’s hand on her shoulder.
“You stay here and I’ll get it,” he said, then crossed to the other bunk, and gingerly lifted with his huge, hairy hands the shrieking bundle, from which protruded two tiny, red fists, jerking and clawing about, and carried it to its mother. Her practised hand hushed it for a moment, but its pangs were beyond temporary alleviation, and its cries soon broke forth.
“If I could git up and mix it some flour and water,” she said, feebly attempting to rise.
“What’s the matter with us doing that?” queried Moreau. “How do you do it? Just give us the proportions and we’ll dish it up as if we were born to it.”
Under her direction he put flour in one of the dippers, and handed Fletcher a tin cup with the order to fill it with water at the spring. Both men were deeply interested, and Fletcher rushed back from the spring with a dripping cup, as if fearful that the infant would die unless the work of feeding was promptly begun.
“Now go on,” said Moreau, armed with the dipper and a tin teaspoon; “what’s next?”
“Sugar,” she said; “if you put a touch of sugar in it tastes better to them.”
“Here, sugar. Hand it over quick. Now, there we are. How do you mix ’em, Lucy?”